ANNUAL REPORT (2010-2011)

Eureka Schools

Implemented by AID INDIA Supported by Sella Synergy

Annual Report – June – 2010 to April - 2011

Introduction: Successful journey of AID India and Sella Synergy continued for the 5th Consecutive Year for the betterment of education. Aid India is running 2 schools, one is in Kancheepuram and another one is in Thiruvannamalai District. Our schools are very much different from the other schools for example, In these 2 schools we have created an atmosphere for the Kids to learn to question before learning the answers. This shows how different our school is from others. This report covers the following items:

• Report Summary

• Activities and Events • Annexure A: Events Report and Photographs

• Annexure B: Training Report • Annexure C: Evaluation Results

Report Summary: Infrastructure: Aid India continued its work towards making the classroom more conducive for learning. We have painted the entire classroom and the classroom black boards for both the schools. We did some repair works in the building roofs in both the schools. Since we do not have enough classrooms in Vembakkam we have ordered a Blue Container from Sagayam's Seatrade Services, Parrys and the room size is 15",15" and 10" feet and we made three rooms out of it.

� We allotted a separate room for library and resource room � Uneven grasses were removed and sand was filled in the ground � Basement for the container was done � Steps and Verandha near the container was constructed

Conducive Environment >>>> Effective Learning

Providing Learning Resource Materials: This Academic year also we have followed Tamil Nadu State board books with our Eureka Methodology. For the first standard we have followed I Std – Samacheer Kalvi Books. We have also hired a resource person “GEETHA SUNDER” for developing our social studies content for this academic year. We have continued designing Pre-primary, Math, Tamil, Science, Social Studies and English kits and supplied those to our schools. We have provided

� State Board Books from I STD to V STD � Around 80 Bilingual books and 70 Story books for Library � Pre-Primary Materials

o Number cards o Sight words – Tamil and English words o Stirrer for place value, addition and subtraction o Thenthuli Kits o Letter Box – Teacher Made Materials o Kola mavu for writing practice o Flash Cards – English and Tamil o Workbooks o Teacher’s Manual for Every Quarter

� Math Kit o Basic Numbers chart o Number sequence board o Rupees board and rupees for addition o Addition Board and Charts o Subtraction and multiplication boards o Division and multiplication kits o Fractions kit o Worksheets o Teacher’s Manual for Every Quarter

� Tamil Kit o Letter , Word, Sentence calendars o Thiruppi Padi – flip chart o Activity kit on joining words, word banks o Letter writing work sheets o Para and story cards o Puzzles o Grammer Worksheets o Teacher’s Manual for Every Quarter

� English Kit o Flash cards o Flip charts - Phonics o Sight words

o Words and sentence strips o Picture flips o Phonics cards and other charts o Worksheets – Grammers, Writing practice, Phonics o English DVD – Shapes and patterns!

� Science Kit o Puzzles o Parts of the body – Charts o Vitamins and diseases charts o Science C.Ds o Record Sheets o Simple machines o Planets model o Worksheets

� Social Studies Kit o Stories and worksheets o Mind map chart

Excellent Materials >>>> Effective Learning

Providing other Materials:

� Uniforms – Pink and Blue shirts with Grey shorts � Lunch Bags � Lunch Boxes � Water Bottles � T-shirts with Eureka School Logo � School diaries � Health Cards � Note books � Evaluation files � School bags � Pencil boxes, pencils, pens, sharpner, Erasers etc � Karate Uniforms � Annual Day Cups and prizes

Extra Curricular Activities >>>> Holistic Development

Activities and Events

� Navadisha Montessori Institute is the well known Montessori Institute, where they are teaching kids from the kindergarten to IXth Standard through Montessori Method. They offered a 10 Days Certificate course, AMI Assistant Certificate Course (Age level 3-6), in Velachery, Chennai. The course was from 19th to 28th April, 2010. Teachers from our Eureka Schools (both Koovathur and Vembakkam Participated) Ms. Parimala & Ms. Muthulakshmi (Kindergarten Teachers), Revathi & Uma Rani (I STD subject Teachers) from Koovathur School, Mr. Kumar (Head Master) & Ms. Manjula (Math Teacher) from Vembakkam School attended this Training Course along with the Eureka School Monitoring Person Mr. Gokul. Participants from all over Chennai attended the training programme. Ms. Rukmini, Ms. Hema and Ms. Ruby (Resource Person) conducted this training course

� Hippocampus Reading Foundation conducted a training programme in

Koovathur Eureka School for the librarians and for the reviewers for setting up a library in our school. It was held on 8th and 9th of June, 2010. Ms. Jaya and Mr. Raghu, conducted this training. Ms. Saraswathi and Ms. Uma Rani from Koovathur, Mr. Kumar and Ms. Bhuvana from Vembakkam, Vivek as a reviewer along with 10 more teachers from other institution participated in this training.

� Eureka School Content team and Eureka School teachers gave the 4 days training for 7 Teachers from Vani Nikethan School, Utthar Kasi. The training was held on 22nd June to 25th June, 2010.

� Dr. Kiran Bedi interacted with our Eureka School Kids.

(Detailed report is attached in the Annexure A)

� Independence day was celebrated in our Eureka Schools, Koovathur and Vembakkam on 15th of August, 2010. Respective Head masters hosted the flags then flags and sweets were distributed to kids. Teachers talked about Freedom Fighters and their contribution towards independence and Kids also performed cultural programmes, gave speeches about our great freedom fighters, enacted plays, sang some patriotic songs. Event was concluded with our "National Anthem".

� Children skills development programme (CSDP) from Sri Lanka visited

our koovathur Eureka School twice this year itself. Overall, it was their III time visit. (See the Annexure)

� Eureka School, Vembakkam, Library was inaugurated and it is supported by by Mr. Aurto and his family for their 50th year wedding Anniversary. ( See the Annexure )

� Chocolate Fest was celebrated in Koovathur and Vembakkam School

along with Ms. Giada and Mr. Murali from Sella

� Koovathur School kids won many prizes in “Karutholi Iyakkam” – Central Government’s Exhibition. (See the Annexure)

� Sports Day was celebrated in our both the schools and prizes were

distributed during the Annual Day. This year we have celebrated our Annual day in a very small manner. We have invited parents along with village leaders. Small fancy dress competition was held in the stage and the prizes were distributed for the winners of the sports day event.

� Eureka School, Koovathur was announced one among the top 100 Winners in DFC – Design for Change Contest (See the Annexure)

� A Teacher Training was conducted once in a quarter and 4 Teacher

training programmes were conducted during this 2010 – 2011. (See the Annexure)

Annexure A (i): Dr. Kiran Bedi, Interacted with our Eureka School Kids: Gruppo Banca Sella organized an event on, "The Effective Corporate Social Responsibilities as the foundation of Sustainable growth". It was held on 21st July, 2010 at M.S. Swaminathan Research foundation. Dr. Kiran Bedi and Dr. Swaminathan were the chief guests. Dr. Balaji Sampath, Dr. Karthikeyan, Mr. Madhavan, Mr. Jeevanandham were the special panelist for the discussion.

17 of our Eureka School, Koovathur V standard kids participated in this event.

Dr. Kiran also interacted with our Kids. During the interaction one of our Kid, Swetha, asked Dr. Kiran that she also wanted to become an IPS officer like Dr. Kiran, and she wants to know what she has to do for becoming IPS officer. Jayasree and Dilliganesh wrote a special letter to Dr. Kiran for requesting Dr. Kiran to visit our Koovathur School. Ashwin, Praveen, Lavanya, Dhivya and Sandhya explained

science experiments to the participants and the Chief Guests.

In this event, Gruppo Banca Sella and AID India together given an Award and a Citation for Rohan, finished his Junior college in U.S, Seattle, for his contribution to AID India. Dr. Kiran praised him a lot and said, "He will be the future of our Young India".

About Rohan and his Contribution

In August 2009, AID INDIA got together with 16 year old Rohan from USA for a fund raising program for one of its schools in Trichy.

Rohan embarked on a fundraising campaign centered on his summit attempt of Mount Rainier in August. Mount Rainier, a 14,400-foot-tall mountain and the tallest in the Cascade Mountain Range, is the most glaciated peak in the lower 48 states and is an icon of the Pacific Northwest. He raised funds for two different charities in two different parts of the world: Seattle Children's Hospital in Seattle (another iconic institution) and AID India in Chennai. Rohan Paramesh was able to raise a total of $9100 for AID INDIA.

Funds raised for AID INDIA by Rohan went towards the costs and tuition of the students of Vinobhaji School, which is a public school for 115 orphaned children. The school was started in 1996 in Lalgudi. Then, the school only consisted of 50 students with two teachers. By 2009 - 10, the school strength has gone up to 126 children with 7 teachers. The main aim of the school is to demonstrate a successful model of an ideal school where learning is both fun and informative for the children. In his speech, he said that he felt very proud to get an award and a citation from an iconic person Dr. Kiran Bedi.

"I want all children to have a chance at living a quality life, unhindered by financial worries," responds Rohan about his motivations.

Eureka School Teachers Facilitated

Banca Sella also gave gifts of Appreciation to all the Eureka School Teachers (both Koovathur and Vembakkam) for their effective contribution and dedication towards Eureka Schools.

This news is published in The Hindu, dt.22nd July, 2010, Chennai edition (Page 2)

Link: http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/22/stories/2010072258980200.htm

Annexure A (ii): CSDP, Sri Lanka - 2nd time visit to Koovathur School

During February, 24 kids from CSDP visited our Koovathur Eureka School. This time different set of 14 Students, 6 teachers and 4 regular staffs from Children Skills Development Programme, Sri Lanka visited our Koovathur Eureka School on 2nd of September, 2010. Mr. Vivek briefly described about the History, Methodology and objective of our Eureka School.

They were thrilled by the facts and they wanted to visit our classes and performed some cultural programme, conducted few competitions and distributed prizes to our kids. Even they took classes for our kindergarten kids, taught few English and Tamil Jingles and they also conducted few games for both Indian and Sri Lankan kids. In the afternoon, they performed dance programmes and Lavanya, Std V from our school performed a classical dance. Srilankan kids got 1st & 2nd prizes for their performances and Lavanya of our school got the 3rd prize. At the end of the day, they gave medals to the winners.

Interesting Snapshots:

Annexure A (iii): CSDP, Sri Lanka, III Time visit to Koovathur School Like previous visits 14 Students, 6 teachers and 4 regular staffs from Children Skills Development Programme, Sri Lanka visited our Koovathur Eureka School on 17th of February, 2011. I briefly described about the History, Methodology and objective of our Eureka School. Their 6 Pre-primary teachers observed our Kindergarten classes and took classes for our kids, taught few English and Tamil Jingles and they also conducted few games. Then, they have performed dance programmes and Praveen, Std V from our school performed a Casual dance. Srilankan kids got 1st & 2nd prizes for their performances and Praveen from our school got the 3rd prize. Finally they have given the trophy to the Eureka School, Coordinator, Vivek for supporting their cultural and educational activities in our School.

Annexure A (iv): Library Inauguration function at Vembakkam

Our Library Inauguration function was held on 22nd October, 2010, at 2.30 PM at our Eureka School, Vembakkam. We bought 4 low- level book shelves along with over 150 small children books. We bought comics books, bilingual books, Tamil short stories, English story books, origami related books, Math puzzle books etc., The library was inaugurated by Vivek, Project Manager, Eureka Schools. After the library was inaugurated, all the kids happily entered into our library and they started lending, taking and reading those books. This library was supported by Mr. Aurto and his family for their 50th year wedding Anniversary. Our kids and teachers designed charts with "The Thank You" Note and also our kids

prepared some art crafts for our sponsors.

Annexure A (v): Koovathur School kids won many prizes in “Karutholi Iyakkam” – Central Government’s Exhibition

On 31st of January, 2011, Koovathur School II, III, IV and V standard kids (65 Kids) along with 4 teachers were taken to Kalpakkam Karutholi Iyakkam

Exhibition. It was an exhibition conducted by the Central Government. Kids were taken to Horticulture, Sculpture, Road way Department, Water Way Department, Railway Department, Education department, Science Department etc. After that all the kids and teachers along with other school kids were taken to the General hall where a Doctor from Health Department gave a talk about Tuberculosis and another person from Thiruporur talked about the awareness about pollutions. After the brief talks, Doctor asked sequence of Questions to all the kids about Tuberculosis, its causes, spreading nature and its treatment. Most of the questions were answered by our Eureka School, Koovathur Kids and received prizes and certificates. Interesting thing is our school competed with High school and Higher Secondary School Students. We have received almost 16 prizes out of some 20. Personally that doctor praised our school and enquired about our school. Even our teachers Mr. Karunakaran, Ms. Mahiladevi and few of our kids gave an interview to 98.3 FM, it was a live streaming. This event was covered by Pothigai Channel; they have covered this in theirnews bulletin on the same day at 8.30 PM.

Annexure A (vi): Eureka School - Koovathur is one among 100 winning entries at DFC Our Eureka School, Koovathur and Vembakkam are participating in the Riverside School’s Design for Change Contest. In Koovathur: Plan: Empowering Girl Kids - Come on Girls, We Can!! - Our primary class Girls is teaching Karate to their Village Girls in order to develop their self-confidence and to defend themselves in this crime-prone and male dominated society - Target - 3 Villages Actual: - 4 Villages. We have implemented this into 4 nearby villages – Udalkara Kuppam, Veppanjeri, Anaicut, Nergunapat. In each village there were a bunch of 5 Eureka School girls teamed up and taught Karate to the village girls. Totally, 32 Village

girl kids were being taught few basic Karate Stunts. In Vembakkam: Plan: Trees for pollution free - Kids will be going to visit the Government schools, there they are going to perform a play and planning to give a tree saplings to their school along with a tree leaf with a note "Save Us" Actual: Since Schools were closed due to quarterly examinations, we have implemented this in to the villages. Kids till now implemented this project in to 3 villages. DFC was impressed with our Koovathur Idea: People from DFC were very much impressed about our Koovathur Idea and they said it’s a unique store and wanted to shoot this story. Mr. Seetharaman, Camera man, shot the entire scenario on 29th of September. He shot the Udalkara Kuppam kids stunt in our Eureka School Premises and went to Veppanjeri village, there he shot some parents and village people’s live interviews. And this idea has been selected for one among the 100 winning entries in Design For

change Contest - 2010. Here is the link: http://designforchange.trizinnovation.com/olio/view/view.php?id=1043 The credits go to our Kids, who made us proud again! And also to our entire Eureka School Team.

Annexure A (vii): Koovathur and Vembakkam School Kids visit Tholkappiya Poonga and Crocodile Park It was a sunny day, 15th of March, 2011. 132 Kids in koovathur and 100 Kids in Vembakkam, 21 Teachers along with 5 Volunteers were taken on a visit to the Tholkappiya Poonga - an Eco Park, named after the tamil poet Tholkappiyar, inaugurated recently at Adyar, Chennai. We entered the park by 12 noon. Ms. Gomathi, an Interpretation executive briefed about the park and the necessities of these eco-friendly parks. She also briefed the children about the 58 acres of the park area, how it was before and now and about the objectives of this park. 1) To grow or plant rare medical herbs and medical plants 2) To promote generating energy from renewable energy sources etc. She explained about how the waste products like broken tiles and stones were used to make sculptures of crocodile, butterflies images etc. She also explained the children about the sewage water sanitization with the help of wind mill, located in the park.

Two officials from the park assisted us and provided us with information and the facts about the park. Kids loved all and there was a chair made up of snakes like structure in which the kids were scared sit in it. There were beautiful iamges & paintings of butterflies, statues of scorpion, snakes, crocodile, insects & reptiles. We then went to a place where we can see birds through binoculars. Since it was summer and was hot in the noon, we happened to see only few birds. After that we all sat and took some rest in a place made up of hut to take rest. where we can sit and take rest. After having lunch there, we all started to the Crocodile Park by 2.30 PM.

We reached the Crocodile Park at 3.30 PM. Kids were made to visit around the crocodiles there and they witnessed the poison extraction from the King Cobra snakes. They saw different crocodiles from different countries, snakes, tortoise etc. We left the Park by 4.30 PM and reached the school around 5.30 PM.

Annexure A (viii):

External Visitors Feed-back about our school *BIM Students visited our Koovathur School

Ms. Jayasree, Ms. Sindhu and her friend, M.B.A Students from BIM Institute, Trichy, visited our Eureka School, Koovathur on 2nd July, 2010. Mr. Vivek briefed about the history of Eureka School and explained the school’s objectives to them. They spent half-a-day in our school. They have visited Kindergartens, and observed each subjects separately in different classes. They have enquired about the materials and its usage which we are using in our school and also interacted with our kids. They appreciated our materials and its dynamic usage.

All three students were extremely enjoyed the visit and also wanted to adopt a village for our AID India’s focus village programme in Trichy District.

*LAIA Foundation Visited our Koovathur School

About LAIA Foundation

Laia Foundation is an NGO located in Vedanthangal, South India, meant to: Improve the quality of EDUCATION in rural areas through evening tuition centres and supporting the Government schools, providing extra teachers, furniture, proper sanitation facilities, etc.

To undertake activities directly or indirectly related with HEALTH , such as, promotion of toilets, bringing safe drinking water to the villagers, organizing medical camps, amongs other. Laia Foundation is linked to the Barcelona based NGO Fundació Laia Mendoza.

About their Visit

7 staffs from Laia foundation visited our Eureka School, Koovathur on 07th July, 2010. Five of them were from Barcelona, Spain and other two staffs from Vedanthangal. Through eureka child website they came to know about our School. We briefed about the history of Eureka Schools and its objectives. The main objective of their visit was visiting the school and learning about Eureka Learning materials and methodology. They have visited each and every class and enquired about AID India’s methodology and tried different materials among themselves. They were very much impressed about our methodology. They praised the way our teachers self motivated to educate kids. They felt the free atmosphere in our school is perfect for education. They also wanted to have these materials along with the training for their tuition center teachers to equip them.

*Vembakkam School Visit Report from Ms. Lucie, France

Ms.Lucie Danober from France visited our Eureka School, Vembakkam on 17th August, 2010. She came to AID India for Intership for 3 days. She visited our School and prepared a report based on her visit.

Date of the Visit: 17th August, 2010.

STRENGTHS

� Develops its own contents to be sure that the teaching really comes up to the NGO’s expectations

� Special training for teachers, regular updates

� A wide range of programs

� A lots of volunteers (often students): do some fundraising for example

� A solid range of donors: relationship with the Italian bank “Banca Sella” in particularly is really strong

� Develops its own material: I was just impressed by the quality of educating books, really a strength of Aid India => a lot of pictures, written in big capital letters, colorful, play, gomets to learn numbers, cards with pictures + name of the object in English and Tamil (teachers can create their own educating material)

� I particularly liked some English cards with action (“jump”, “eat”, “sing”,…), and for the pictures, young students from one of the NGO’s school were the “models” (good initiative in my opinion) + English educational DVD with a casting of schools students = good idea

� A particular view of education: freedom, self-confidence, leadership are as developed as possible among students. Every children expresses at least once during one class + An important part is left to experiment + since kindergarten, leaders are named in small groups to explain to others + one board in each class to stick children’s drawings, work => make them proud of their work + regular acknowledgements of all children

For the same reasons, teachers make a portfolio of all activities, worksheets, which are given to each kid at the end of year.

WEAKNESSES

� Relationships with the government schools even if intervention programs, especially in villages, exist) remain difficult: school headmasters don’t want the NGO to meddle in the functioning of the school (which could mean the school is not good enough) => How to create trust and mutual respect between government schools and NGO?

� Some schools or centers are a little bit far from the villages in which the students actually live (further than government schools) + don’t offer free

lunch (// government schools). It requires a certain goodwill from the parents + a lot of parents are daily workers, frequently change their jobs and housings : how is it possible for children to have a follow-up education at school?

� How will they adapt to government schools after 5th standard? Possibility to go to Aid India’s evening classes

� Limited number of seats (too many children = inefficient work): requests have been rejected

� Social sciences are underrepresented (important part of education) : project of the program to develop it

What is “Eureka child project” about? Program was launched to have a long-term impact, focused on the young children (kindergarten to 5th standard), to fill gaps of government schools teaching (in fact, only 30 to 40% of the 5th standard children in Tamil Nadu can read), to show that it’s possible with few resources to create an effective working environment for children.

Why is it effective? The aim is to provide as much freedom as possible for children and teachers alike, children should have the right to ask questions if they don’t fully understand (and if teachers don’t know the answer, it’s not serious, they just find the answer for the next day). During their schooling, children are expected to acquire knowledge but also and especially to build their self-confidence by having opportunities to express themselves. Eureka schools want to educate hard-working students, but also curious and open-minded children, that’s why they attach great importance to educational trips (zoological park, museum, tree walk…) which develop a new way of learning, in different environments. For same reasons, extra curriculum activities are (or at least should be, according to targets of the program) as developed as possible (martial arts for example), they contribute to the child’s optimal development. Music, singing, dancing classes are also good opportunities for children to express (even if finding teachers willing to travel to the school is quite difficult)

In these schools, marks are not used to determine children’s progression of learning. There is no use to compare kids, which put too much pressure on them and don’t help them to be more efficient in their work, especially at this age. Instead, teachers use skill-based evaluation to point out what exactly each child knows and doesn’t know. The idea is to focus on weaknesses, to understand in which area each child needs help to improve, and afterwards to form “support groups” with one specific skill targeted. Teaching is more adapted to children’s real needs than in other schools. However, parents often disagree at the beginning because they are used to marks and they think they need it to be sure that their child really learns something at school. That’s why regular parents-teachers meetings are necessary, but generally speaking communication between school and families should be as frequent and developed as possible, to involve them in their child’s scholarship and first of all to reduce absenteeism, which is

one of the biggest obstacle to learning. In these schools for example, parents have decided to raise funds themselves, which is the sign of a quite good relationship.

Teachers, meanwhile, are encouraged to develop their own materials and to bring new ideas to improve the level of teaching (in my opinion, this is vital in a school to encourage teachers to participate to improve their teaching and to renew their materials regularly).

Lesson content is also important that the means used to teach, that’s why the NGO is not obsessed by qualifications of the teachers or their previous experience, but their interest in children, their will to teach is more important than everything else. One of Eureka’s best strength (in my opinion) is the training which is provided to each teacher, to help them to provide a high quality teaching to their future children. It also allows the program managers to have a certain level of control of what teachers really do in classrooms (there are regular visits, twice a month, of content people and once in every 2 or 3 months, training updates), and which aims they want to achieve with the students. I really like the idea of providing a special training, because even increasing the number of visits is not enough and not really practical for managers. They also have a number of volunteers which teach a little bit, especially to speak English (vital to make the children regularly practice English, in small conversation: learning vocabulary, having audio classes, watching English movies is basic but not enough)

The environment is also considered as really important, so that the children feel healthy and at ease to work: facilities are good enough for students and colorful; there are paintings everywhere on the walls (a funnier way to learn and children –especially the youngest ones- feel comfortable). All the educational material is attractive, colorful, fun, easy to read. Children can write the ground with chalk, games and images are used as often as possible to facilitate learning. Corporal punishment is avoided, so that children feel free to speak and make mistakes.

How is the Eureka program being financed? It costs 6500 rupees per child and per year (which is apparently cheaper than what one kid costs to the government: 7000 rupees, I’ve tried to find it on the net but it wasn’t possible). Program mainly gets money from donors (in this case from an Italian Bank, “Banca Sella”), but which has to be underlined is the particular relationship built between the bank and the students: it works as a sponsorship system, so that the donor is really involved in the program (don’t “just” give money), which is better to build a long term cooperation. Each kid has his particular donor, they have picture of each other, and sponsor sends gifts for his/her birthday. Of course, there are regular visits of schools from donors and in exchange frequent communication from Eureka managers to donors: every 2 or 3 months, kids assignments and worksheets are sent, a special website has been created with updates every weeks. Funding is sustainable because donors know what happens in schools and because program is successful, according to the results of students and to skills evaluation compared to common schools.

*Barbara and Barbara, Callie and RV Rajan visited our Koovathur School

Barbara and Barbara, Director of Global pathways school, Chettipalayam, Ms. Callie from Pratham and Mr. Rajan from Rotary club visited our koovathur School on 14th October, 2010.

They have visited all the classes and also our computer lab.

Feedback

Ms. Barbara Galbraith - "It was wonderful to visit Eureka School and to see how well the children are learning. They are involved and interested in their work and they have passion towards learning. Congratulations to the teachers".

Ms. Barbara Goodwin Zeibots - "We hope that you will be able to go to standard 6,7,8."

Ms. Callie - "Great work. It is wonderful to se so many girls and boys engaged in the classroom. Best of luck!"

Snapshots:

* Mr. Sheshadri – Chief Co-ordinator, Pratham Mysore Visited our

koovathur School

Mr. Sheshadri visited our Eureka School, koovathur on 15th of February, 2011. “ It was indeed a wondeful experience talking to the teachers and interacting with children. This is a brilliant concept and worthy and being emulated by Government. I wish all the best to the entiore team behind the beautiful effort.”

* Hanne Jørgensen's Feed-back mail Finally a note from me saying thank you very much for inviting me to the school in Koovathur and for arranging with Vivek to show me and Mr. Frede around.

It was a special treat for me to get to see a “different” type school as I have visited ALC schools only so far and I would like to tell you that I’m very impressed with what I saw, how dedicated the teachers are, how well behaved and self directed learners the children are etc. There is a very nice atmosphere at the school which I find very important too.

After the visit I have been curious to know more about how you train the teachers, especially the kindergarten teachers, because they achieve amazing results I think. I don’t enough about India yet to know what is common but in Denmark you don’t find kindergarten children doing addition and subtraction with one and two digit numbers. I’m also thinking that lots of kindergarten teachers could learn a lot from you and your way of doing things.

Thanks again for taking your time to show me the school. Keep up your marvelous job. I’ll be in touch and please do the same.

Best regards / Med venlig hilsen

Hanne Jørgensen Master Trainer - Care for Education LEGO Foundation

*Other Visits: On 8th of March 2011, Ms. Manmadha Devi, Executive Director of Tamil Nadu Foundation visited our Koovathur School. Feedback: "Eureka School is an innovative school which has an unique method of teaching for the children. I feel this is a better method of teaching than the CBSE method. If Tamil Nadu Foundation and AID India work together in the field of Education along with Government of Tamilnadu, I am sure within a decade, we could see the State of Tamilnadu without dropout children and also the quality of education will be improved to a large extent by the input and efforts taken by AID India and alround development will be easily achievable one for all the Children. Good thought! Best Efforts, Better Outcome. We wish all the best for AID India".

On 11th of March, 2011, Mr. Krishnamoorthy, Retd., High Court Judge now in USA visited our Koovathur School. Feedback: "I am very much impressed with the methodology adopted in teaching in this school and also the freedom enjoyed by the pupils. I wish the school, the staff and the students Best of luck".

On 23rd of March, 2011 Mr. Ramakrishna, HM from Hariyana School and her wife Ms. Jayanthi visited our koovathur School. Mr. Ramakrishnan said, "Your transparent lesson plans, interactive and integrative education will enhance SELF EDUCATION. Add value to your education daily. Bring in more Strategies. Yeh Dil Mange More!!"

Ms. Jayanthi said, "Simply loved these little teachers taught me to be enthusiastic, energetic and eager. The classrooms were a win-win situation. The activities are meaningful. The facilitator-learner entities were often reversed. Excellent Phonetic Approach. Keep up the good work!"

Annexure B:

Report on Teacher Training Training – 1 – Introductory phase

Goal:

1. All the teachers should able to know one year plan for their respective subjects.

2. Training on content plan for July/ August.

3. Class room management

4. Teachers capacity building

5. Skill Chart Training

A 2-day training program for the Eureka school teachers was held on the 28th and

29st of July, 2010. Training was given for Math, Science and Social Science

teaching. Mr. Umapathy, Mr. Tarnus, Ms.Meenakshi and Ms.Geeta from

Kathalaya were the resource people for Maths, Science and Social Science

respectively. For Tamil, Ms. Devi gave the training.

English training was held on the 28th June, 2010. English training for the month of

August for our both Koovathur and Vembakkam Eureka School was held on

28th of June, 2010. It was a one day training programme. Ms. Padhmini was the

resource person. Mr. Kumar from Vembakkam and Ms. Umarani from

Koovathur attended this training. The training was the reinforcement

programme of what they have done on July. It has phonetics, writing practise,

Reading practise etc.

Finally from this year we have decided to measure skills of the kids through skill

matrix. We have extracted the skill which needs to be acquired by that particular

grade and formulated the chart. And also given training for the teachers about

how to use the skill chart.

Training – 2 Eureka School Teachers Workshop – 18th and 19th of September, 2010. Second set of Eureka School Content Training (Tamil, English, Math, Science, and Pre-primary) was held on 18th and 19th of September, 2010. 20 Teachers from Koovathur, Vembakkam and Kothari School were participated. Training was started with a small Ice-breaking introduction session and small review was conducted. Then Ms. Radha and Mr. Vivek talked about the importance of skill chart and how it is going to help the teachers.

1. Ms. Revathi and Ms. Deepa– Pre-primary

2. Mr. Tarnus, Mr. Ravishankar and Ms. Shobana – Math

3. Ms. Sridevi, Ms. Devi and Mr. Damu – Tamil

4. Ms. Sumangali and Ms. Parvathi – English

5. Ms. Meena – Science

6. Ms. Radha – Skill chart introduction training

Pre-Primary Training:

Ms. Revathi and Ms. Deepa taught the teachers on the following skills

� Language Skills

� Intellectual development

� Tamil

� Reading

� Writing

� Math

� English

� Spoken

� Reading

� Environmental science

She also talked about the classroom structure and how to segregate the kids who don’t attain that particular skill.

On the second day Ms. Revathi explained the teachers about how to utilize and fill the skill chart and how to evaluate kids.

Tamil Training:

Mr. Damu introduced the game and play way method of teaching which involves competition in the reading skill. Ms. Sridevi and Ms. Devi gave training

on reading skills and comprehension skills. Ms. Sridevi also taught Tamil grammars and gave some worksheets for writing practice. Ms. Devi talked about how to fill the skill chart and the uses of the skill chart.

English Training:

Ms. Sumangali and Ms. Parvathi gave the English Training. They have asked them to do initial skill chart evaluation before starting the classes. So they gave full training on how to evaluate and then how to segregate the kids who attain that particular skill from the kids who is trying to attain that skill. They gave training in English Vocabulary, Spoken component, Reading component, writing component and grammars and connecting dots.

Math Training:

Mr. Ravishankar stressed the importance of skill chart and how to evaluate kids. He asked teachers to prepare their own sample evaluation tools and he was very particular to evaluate the kids on one to one basis. Ms. Shobana and Mr. Tarnus reviewed the effects of the previous training. They found that it was difficult to follow day by day plans. Then they have designed this training programme into week-wise plan. Mr. Tarnus gave the manuals and asked the teachers to use it as their hand book and he insisted the teachers to prepare their own lesson plan for the given day.

Science Training:

Ms. Meena taught about vitamins, plant structure, various plants, major diseases, its causes, its spreading nature and how to prevent it. She also trained the teachers on in experiments. She taught the experiments relating to solvents, sublimations, solutions etc.

Snapshots: Preprimary Training by Revathi & English Training by Sumangali

Maths Training by Tarnus

Tamil Training by Damu & Science Training by Meena

Training – 3

Eureka School Teacher Training held on 4th and 5th of Dec 2010

Eureka School Content Training was held on first week end of Decmeber. 21 Teachers from Koovathur, Vembakkam School participated in the session. Training was provided for all the contents. The resource people were:

• Ms. Revathi – Pre-primary • Ms. Shobana and Mr. Tarnus – Math • Ms. Geetha – Social Studies • Ms. Devi – Tamil • Ms. Sumangali – English • Ms. Parvathy – English • Ms. Meena – Science

Pre-Primary: Ms. Revathi started her training with a group activity. She taught the rhymes and importance of story telling among kids and also stressed the importance of sensory, motor activity, Basic Arithmetic activity, and Basic English activity with rhymes.

Math: Ms. Shobana and Mr. Tarnus reviewed the activities conducted by the teachers in the past. She started teaching ‘0’ concepts in addition and subtraction. Mr. Tarnus, taught the concepts of time, measurement, fractions, divisions some basic geometrical shapes. She prepared many worksheets for the fractions, and measurements.

Science: Ms. Meena started her training with a small game. She prepared activity sheets regarding living things and non-living things. She also gave worksheets for the solar system. Meena gave a C.D on the concept of “Birds and Insects”. It was designed in a manner that allowed student to participate. She gave projects for preparing herbarium. She also asked the kids to do some small project on water recycling.

Social Studies: Ms. Geetha sundar from Bangalore, believed that kids can be taught anything through stories. She developed some 14 stories for concepts of Relationships, Festivals, Professionals, Types of houses, Different cultures. She prepared many interesting kits by using charts to teach these concepts through stories.

English: Ms. Sumangali and her mother gave the English training to our Eureka school teachers. She taught grammers like noun, common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and some Greetings, Courtesies, by illustrating several examples and she also asked teachers to continue Phonics from last month’s training. In Phonetics, she taught 9 sounds exclusively to the Eureka School teachers. Prepared the manual for the teachers and explained the classroom structure.

Tamil: Mr. Ramesh and Ms. Devi explained about his writing practice booklet for standards I, II and III. He also focused on Reading skills, Story Comprehension, Conversation, Dialogues, composition, Extracting information from the newspapers, story writing practices etc for Standard IV and V. He also gave Projects for Classes I to V – Posters, Collecting and Processing Information about trees, houses etc. Explained the teachers manual and also about the classroom structure.

Training 4: Evaluation Training

This training is all about the skill based evaluation. In this training, teachers were taught to how to conduct Eureka Common Assessment Test (ECAT) and also the skill matrix. And the kid who doesn’t acquire the particular skill were discussed and content people helped the teachers to conduct mop up classes (Remedial) for the month of April.

SKILL CHART:

Annexure C: English Evaluation:

Koovathur Skills Std. 1 Std. 2

Reading letters 91 100

Reading 3-letter words 41 78 Reading short sentences 0 44 Vocabulary 100 100

Response to Qs 5 6

Vembakkam Skills Std. 1 Std. 2

Reading letters 92 100 Reading 3-letter words 20 24 Reading short sentences 0 6

Vocabulary 76 100 Response to Qs 0 0

Koovathur

Skills Std. 3 Std. 4 Std. 5

Reading 3-letter words 61 79 56

Reading short sentences 61 64 56

Reading para 17 50 44

Vocabulary 100 93 94

Response to Qs 17 71 63

Vembakkam Skills Std. 3 Std. 4

Reading 3-letter words 90 75 Reading short sentences 80 75 Reading para 80 75 Vocabulary 80 100 Response to Qs 70 75

Tamil Evaluation: I Standard skills I Standard Skills Koovathur Vembakkam

3 Letter Words 92% 88% (2-3 words )Reading Sentences 86% 82% Complex Words 78% 76% Sentece with Complex Words 68% 70% Write the letters 96% 90%

Write the 3 letter words 88% 78%

II STD Skills Koovathur Vembakkam

Sentece with Complex Words 83% 79% Complex Sentences 79% 78%

4 Lines Paragraph 68% 73%

Story 69% 70%

III STD Skills Koovathur Vembakkam

Complex Sentences 87% 90% 4 Lines Paragraph 81% 84%

Story 77% 84%

Sentence framing 93% 88%

IV STD

Skills Koovathur Vembakkam

Complex Paragraph 86% 80%

Story 83% 80%

Framing Paragraph 77% 60%

Story Comprehension 79% 80%

Writing own stories 66% 60%

V STD Skills Koovathur

Complex Paragraph 83% Story 80% Framing Paragraph 85% Story Comprehension 81%

Writing own stories 74%

MATH Evaluation: Vembakkam Math Percentage Classes/ Marks 90-100 80-90 70-80 60-70 50-60 Less than 50

I STD 84% 4% 4% 8% 0 0

II STD 39% 28% 6% 5% 11% 11%

III STD 70% 0 10% 0 20% 0

IV STD 20% 20% 40% 0 0 20%

Koovathur Math Percentage: Classes/ Marks 90-100 80-90 70-80 60-70 50-60

Less than 50

I STD 48% 35% 9% 4% 0 4%

II STD 56% 11% 22% 6% 0% 5%

III STD 44% 22% 11% 0 17% 6%

IV STD 40% 13% 20% 13% 7% 7%

V STD 22% 17% 22% 22% 6% 11%